Mikal Cronin

Trouble in Mind; 2011

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Just out of college, Mikal Cronin already has a proven record at garage-rock bashing. As bassist and singer for the Moonhearts (formerly Charle & the Moonhearts), he spent his dorm-dwelling years releasing a sporadic string of fuzz-infused surf-rock tunes. More notably, he's the Waylon Jennings to Ty Segall's Buddy Holly-- a collaborator and sideman who sometimes fills the bass chair in the psych-rock upstart's live band. Friends since high school, they've released a split LP, Reverse Shark Attack, and a handful of singles. But it's Segall-- among the most prolific voices in the thoroughly prolific San Francisco garage scene-- who tends to get the top billing.

On his eponymous debut, Mikal Cronin proves he can hold his own. It's an album of wistful, psychedelic pop that pits lush and layered arrangements against needle-pinning power chords. Like Segall's latest, Goodbye Bread, Cronin's solo turn finds him dialing back his thrashier impulses in order to clear space for singer-songwriter-style introspection. But when the curtain of lysergic gristle is pulled aside, it turns out that they're not the same person, after all. Even when he goes all Neil Young, Segall still retains an affable beach-dude demeanor. Cronin turns out to be the more vulnerable voice-- Elliott Smith in throwback dress, minus the self-loathing. And, like Smith, he has an ear for arrangements.

Album opener "Is It Alright" pivots from Beach Boys-worthy harmonies to chugging chords to jangling acoustic guitars before, finally, spinning off into an outro that sounds like Jethro Tull gone hardcore punk. It's no so much that Cronin knows how to effectively layer instruments (though he does) or collage disparate ideas together (though he does), but that he knows how to use dynamics to his advantage. On "Gone" he works soft-to-loud changes, dropping the bridge down to a whisper before bounding back up for a final, climactic freak-out. At the end of "Again and Again", Cronin drops out the rhythm section, rebuilding the song over a gentle falsetto melody.

Cronin's music owes a heavy debt to 1960s pop, mostly T. Rex and the Beatles (the sax outro on "Apathy" is weirdly reminiscent of the Beatles "Hey Jude"), but his tunes aren't precious period reconstructions. They're delivered with the gritty, gnarly abandon of a Black Flag fan trying to come to terms with their parents' record collection. Like Segall, Cronin brings a young energy to classic rock sounds because, well, he's actually young.

In interviews, Cronin has explained that the bulk of the album was written during the twilight months of his college career, when he was lonely and stressed and taking refuge in his tape recorder. Not exactly as trying a set of circumstances as, say, Tupac recording "Me Against the World", but a sensitive time, for sure. It's a transition that marks the end of structured life and the onset of a long-postponed adulthood, when you're too young and too old at the same time. Cronin nails that mood perfectly, with songs that are frustrated and energetic but flagged with uncertainty and doubt. The songs kick hardest when those melancholy sentiments collide with his crunching, chugging psychedelic urges-- when the volume is blasting in both the amps and the emotions.